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General Information

On this page, we list your Affliction Warlock core
abilities and how they should be used together (rotation) in World of Warcraft
Legion 7.1. We also explain when
to use your various cooldowns. Then, we go deeper and present all the subtleties
that you will need to know if you want to excel at playing an Affliction
Warlock.

The other pages of our Affliction Warlock guide can be accessed
from the table of contents on the right.

About Our Author

This guide has been written by Furty
who raids in Serenity, one of the top World of Warcraft guilds. He plays most
classes at the highest level. You can follow him on
Twitter and
watch him play on
Twitch.

1. Ability Priority List

Affliction is a very consistent and predictable specialization. With the
proper forethought, you can easily plan your global cooldowns far in advance
and optimize your efficiency. This specialization will test your spatial
awareness and punish players who cannot keep track of multiple timers
simultaneously. The priority list for Affliction is detailed below, based off
of the raiding talent build we outlined earlier in the guide:

cooldowns

aoe

Maintain Agony (on up to 5 targets, including
Soul Effigy if talented) at all times.

If you are talented into Contagion, your goal should be to
maintain 100% uptime on Unstable Affliction to take advantage of
the 15% damage buff. Every time Unstable Affliction, you should
recast it so that you do not lose the damage buff.

If you are talented into Absolute Corruption, you should
build up your Soul Shards then cast Unstable Affliction several
times in a row to compound the damage. It is most advantageous to do this
during procs, such as trinkets or weapon enchant.

For more information on your opening sequence, please refer
to our dedicated section.

2. Important Notes

2.1. Reap Usage

Reap Souls is a powerful cooldown that increases damage and doubles
the effect of Ulthalesh, the Deadwind Harvester's traits for 5 seconds per
soul consumed. Much of your gameplay and damage is dependent on your ability
to correctly make efficient use of Reap Souls. You should track your
stacks at all times. Great times to make use of Reap are as follows:

2.2. Unstable Affliction Usage

As discussed in the Action Priority List, there are 2 ways to use your
Unstable Affliction depending on what talents you have chosen.

If you are talented into Contagion, your goal should be to
maintain 100% uptime on Unstable Affliction. As long as
Unstable Affliction is active on your target, you will maintain a
permanent 15% increase to damage done to that target. You should not, however,
cast Unstable Affliction on your Soul Effigy under
any circumstances.

If you are talented into Absolute Corruption or
Mana Tap it is most efficient to dump all your Soul Shards on
consecutive casts of Unstable Affliction while under the
influence of beneficial procs. This allows for the highest amount of
compounding damage and burst. This is especially effective on short lived
targets, and you will regain a Soul Shard if the target dies while
Unstable Affliction is still active.

No matter what talents you choose, it is best to focus all your
Unstable Affliction casts into a single target rather than trying
to multi dot using this spell.

2.4. Agony

Agony is by far your most important spell, as it is the sole
source of Soul Shard generation in the regular rotation. It also deals very
high sustained damage. The trade off, however, is that Agony has
a lengthy ramp up period before it reaches full effectiveness. This means that
if you let Agony drop on one of your primary targets for any
reason you are going to be hemorrhaging DPS. Keeping careful track of your
active Agony casts is the single most important priority of this
specialization, and also the most punishing failure if you mess this up.

2.4.1. Tier 1 Talent Selection

Writhe in Agony is an exceptionally strong talent for dealing
high sustained damage over time, however, it also takes a significant amount of
time to ramp up to full damage (usually ~30 seconds). On fights where constant
target swapping is a priority, or add fights where Agony will not
fully ramp up, Drain Soul is always going to be a better option
for overall DPS. Fights with large stretches of movement can also be
troublesome for Writhe in Agony, as you will have to replace your
Soul Effigy to stay in range of the boss, sacrificing your
Agony stacks. While Writhe in Agony is a very
powerful talent, it amplifies the punishment of letting your stacks fall, so be
extra vigilant when using this talent.

2.5. "Nightfall" — Shard Generation Explained

Every time Agony ticks, a hidden accumulator is incremented.
When it exceeds 1, it generates a shard and rolls over the remainder to start
the next one. The added value per tick is currently 0.16 on average, with some
variance. Each added amount is divided by the square root of the number of
Agonies you currently have active. When you have no Agonies out, the
accumulator is cleared. When you next cast one, it is reset to a random value
from 0 to 0.99.

2.5.1. With Soul Effigy

With Soul Effigy, the increase of shards is calculated by the
forumula of √2, which results in an increase of 41.4% Soul Shards.
For 2 additional targets plus the effigy, we take (√3/√2) which results
in a 22.5% increase in Soul Shards contributed from the Soul Effigy.
Past 4 targets (excluding the Soul Effigy) it is no longer efficient to
use effigy as the contribution of Shard gain and extra damage is not worth
the number of globals needed to maintain it.

2.6. "Pandemic" — Learning to Efficiently Refresh DoTs

Pandemic is a hidden mechanic that allows you to refresh certain timed
effects early without penalty. You can refresh your DoT effects when they have
less than 30% of their maximum duration remaining, and the new DoT's maximum
duration will be added with the remaining duration of the current DoT.

For example, if you cast a fresh Agony while your current one
has a duration of 3.5s, your new Agony will now have a duration of 21.5
seconds.

All your DoTs benefit from Pandemic with the exception of
Unstable Affliction. Instead, reapplications of Unstable
Affliction are folded into the existing debuffs, compounding the damage. Think
of multiple Unstable Affliction applications as all separate
debuffs, even though it shows up as a single debuff. They are all applied and
expire independently of each other, but when their durations overlap they deal
cumulative damage (this is a somewhat confusing concept — TLDR: if you
overwrite your current Unstable Affliction casts you do not lose
any damage no matter when you refresh).

The Pandemic values for safe refreshes for your other DoTs
are as follows:

Some AddOns can provide helpful Pandemic tracking so you do not have to
remember it on the fly.

2.7. Service vs. Sacrifice

As explained in the Talents page, Grimoire of Service should be
your default talent choice for most raid encounters.
Grimoire of Sacrifice, however, will pull ahead on fights with a
lot of stacked cleave and AoE. If you choose to use
Grimoire of Sacrifice, try to place your Soul Effigy (if talented)
right on top of the boss. If you stand in melee, on top of your Effigy, your
Grimoire of Sacrifice will splash onto your target and your
Soul Effigy, which will in turn splash more damage back onto your
target. This double dipping is a minor gain, but worth doing if possible.

2.8. Effigy vs. Conduit

At 4+ targets it is no longer efficient to continue to apply DoTs to new
targets. Therefore, the maximum amount of targets we will ever apply
Agony to is 3 targets. The Soul Effigy counts as a
target, so on council style bosses that have 3-4 bosses we need to choose a new
talent. Soul Conduit is the ideal alternative, as you can keep
DoTs applied to 3 targets without the damage penalty of
Soul Effigy and also receive a reasonable amount of Soul Shard
refunds, allowing you to apply more pressure to your primary target.
Soul Effigy is still the superior talent in 2-target
scenarios. For straight AoE, you should use Phantom Singularity.

2.9. Defensive Utility

Take full advantage of your defensive spells. The Tier 5 talents, in
particular, offer an array of movement and defensive cooldowns. In many
situations, the mobility advantage from Demonic Circle or
Burning Rush gives you more survivability than
Dark Pact. Unending Resolve is a solid damage
reduction that can be used any time you feel threatened.

2.10. Doomguard and Infernal

You should use Summon Doomguard as your primary DPS cooldown for
single target. Whenever 2+ targets will be present for the majority of the
duration, you should instead use Summon Infernal.

3. Core Concepts

Affliction is an extremely predictable specialization, with a focus on
planning and forethought. Great spatial awareness is required to simultaneously
juggle multiple debuff clusters of varying duration on several targets. While
this specialization is quite simple to perform on a single target, the
concentration required goes up exponentially as more targets are added to the
mix. Focus on perfecting these 2 core concepts to achieve the best possible
results from this specialization:

DoT uptimes & Soul Shard expenditure;

movement management.

Managing movement is a fundamental skill shared by all the caster classes in
World of Warcraft, however, it still pays dividends to have a proper
understanding of how to perfectly execute movement. This is particularly true
in Legion, as many of the raid encounters involve high movement.

3.1. DoT Uptimes & Shard Expenditure

This largely comes down to combining all the knowledge from the earlier
parts of the guide and applying it in a practical environment. Maintaining all
your DoTs, properly handling Unstable Affliction when talented
into Contagion, and keeping track of your
Soul Effigy are all important parts of this specialization. It
can be helpful to keep your Soul Effigy close to the boss to ease
with line of sight, as it doesn't appear on your boss frames. Use of powerful
aura tracking AddOns such as Weak Auras can also be extraordinarily beneficial
to helping you keep track of multiple targets and your
Soul Effigy.

3.2. Movement Management

While it is difficult to describe the best ways to position and move during
a dungeon or raid encounter, it is essential to your success as an Affliction
Warlock. Since all of your DoTs (with the exception of Unstable Affliction)
are instant casts, it is very efficient to plan your refreshes during movement.
If you have recently refreshed your DoTs, you can also cast Life Tap
on the move to regenerate Mana. Demonic Gateway can be
highly effective on many encounters, and is under appreciated by many
players and raid groups. Think of Demonic Gateway as a raid cooldown
that can instantly teleport your entire raid group 40 yards, and the potential
this ability holds quickly becomes clear. Ask your group if they want
Demonic Gateway anywhere specific; if not used for your strategy, use
it instead as a personal cooldown. Finally, always try to position yourself in
a location central to fight movement. For example, if the boss is being moved
in a circle, try to stay on the inside of the kite path to ensure minimal
movement.

3.2.1. Quiet Movement

Many players will unconsciously move during fights, despite it being
unnecessary. For example, sometimes the boss or adds will be moved by the tank
a couple yards, and though you are still in range to cast, you subconsciously
mirror that movement, costing you global cooldowns. Consciously work to "quiet"
your movement, and reduce unnecessary movement to a minimum. The best way to
see this in action is to take a video of your raid, then watch yourself play.
Most players will be surprised by the amount of wasted movement they commit.
When you are forced to move, do not forget to use your instant casts, and make
your path as direct and decisive as possible.